AI-Therapy creates online self-help programs using the latest evidence-based treatments, such as cognitive behavioural therapy. To find out more visit:
After you have collected some data, you usually want a way to describe or summarize it with just a few numbers. Most importantly, you will want a single number that captures the central tendency of the data. There are several ways to measure the central tendency, and the best choice depends on the nature of the data at hand. The following are the most commonly used:
Assume you would like to measure the level of social anxiety among a sample of 21 people. Each person fills out the Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) scale, which gives them a score from 0 to 30. Let's assume you get the following results:
10, 12, 16, 16, 25, 5, 13, 15, 20, 20, 18, 16, 15, 10, 16, 20, 9, 14, 18, 13, 11
5, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 13, 13, 14, 15, 15, 16, 16, 16, 16, 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 25To find the median we note that the value in the middle (position 11) is 15.